No Surrender Cinema: The Boys (Season 4)
Desperation is the name of the game in Season 4 of The Boys, and if you’ve been desperate for some new No Surrender Cinema content, then let’s talk about it! The penultimate season that focuses on a twisted world of superheroes who are far from the upstanding citizens they proclaim to be just came to a close, and man oh man did the shit hit the fan!
SPOILER WARNING: You know the routine by now. Newer media will always get the spoiler warning in case you haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum!
So how desperate are the characters we’ve come to know and love (or know and despise) getting in The Boys? Collectively, the good guys (Butcher, MM, Kumiko, Frenchie, Hughie, and Starlight) are trying their damndest to expose Homelander for the super-powered sociopath that he is. Butcher, who has almost always come under fire for his brutal means of retaliation, is more intent than ever before thanks to his body currently being ravaged by a Compound V-produced tumor. The fact that Homelander has also become guardian to Becca Butcher’s son Ryan (the product of Homelander’s rape of Billy Butcher’s beloved wife) is just throwing gasoline on the raging fire that is The Boys’ war against the population of the powered and privileged. This makes Butcher’s vendetta more personal than ever before, and while this often puts him at odds with his own teammates, the appearance of an old ally in Joe Kessler (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) gives him someone who seems to be encouraging his penchant for overkill.
Superhero satire isn’t the only type that The Boys does well, because just as many of the character you see are pastiches and stand-ins for the real thing, the war of us against them is given some pretty heavy political overtones. We get all the tribalism and finger-pointing that we’re inundated with in everyday real life, except here it’s Starlight inspiring people to stand up against the heavy weight of The Seven and Vought’s mechinations. Of course in this universe some good ol’ fashioned mudslinging just won’t do, so having Starlight’s camp framed for murder while also trying to damage her good standing in the community by having new Seven recruit Firecracker, a jealous former rival of Starlight, letting her loose lips reveal some personal information in an act of character assassination will have to do. While Firecracker isn’t as unstable or dangerous as the previously vanquished Nazi Stormfront, she is positioned as a radical alt-right zealot willing to do whatever it takes to keep Homelander happy.
Elsewhere in the political arena, Victoria Neuman, whom it was previously discovered is a supe herself, one with the ability to pop people’s heads with her Scanners-esque power, continues to scheme and maneuver her way through the ranks. As she focuses on her political career and alliances that will be serve her in the moment, it comes to The Boys’ attention that Neuman knows something about a virus that can kill supes. This knowledge leads to a team outing to a farmhouse, where The Boys, Kessler, Neuman, and even a sprung from prison Stan Edgar have to deal with some very mutated, very unking farm animals that were previously experimented on. If you ever wanted to see fang-bearing, flying sheep wreaking havoc and ripping people apart, then The Boys Season 4 is destination viewing for you!
Besides the political turmoil, the relationship between father and son is explored from both sides in Season 4. Homelander has done his best to raise (brainwash) Ryan to the best of his abilities, but when Ryan doesn’t immediately go along with Homelander’s wishes and maintains a friendly rapport with Butcher, it drives Homelander further into the madness that is already racking his brain. Meanwhile, Butcher tries to lighten up and open up to Ryan, but with the potential for the newly discovered virus having the ability to wipe out ALL supes, Butcher has a moment or two where he’s trying to decide if Ryan, whom had powers genetically passed onto him via Homelander, is worth saving or would simply have to be collateral damage…a not so small sacrifice for the greater good. Then there’s poor Hughie, who has to cope with his father being hospitalized, which leads to the reappearance of his estranged mother and a choice as to whether or not provide his father with V, hoping to heal him. What follows is a fantastic performance from Simon Pegg (whom the original comic version of Hughie was based on), as the V does in fact wake him from his coma, but causes a whole lot more trouble than anyone could have imagined.
There are also plenty of new faces on the superhero front that may one day increase the body count; there’s the aforementioned Firecracker, who, along with Sister Sage, become new members of The Seven and close confidants of Homelander, who has had it with suck ups like The Deep. Neuman’s daughter Zoe is revealed to be a supe early on due to her mother administering V to her, which has morphed her into a grotesque superhuman. There are also a lot of boundary pushing moments with “heroes” like Splinter (akin to Marvel’s Multiple Man), TekKnight (basically Batman), and Webweaver (take a guess who he’s supposed to be) all getting what’s coming to them, but not before a whole lot of TMI moments, both verbally and visually. Sage and Firecracker were the ones who took center stage, especially with Sage serving as Homelander’s advisor, but the disgust of what happens with both TekKnight and Webweaver (not to mention when poor Hughie is caught in disguise as Webweaver) will burn them into your brain more than the two new women in The Seven’s ranks.
It’s been a war that The Boys have been fighting for four seasons, but by the time these 8 episodes ended, it felt like building to an end in Season 5 is the right move. It’s not that I want the show to go away, as I enjoy it immensely, but even Garth Ennis had an endgame in mind with the original comic book. It will certainly be weird to not see Homelander on screen again after next season (and I give Antony Starr all the credit in the world; I loved him in Banshee and had reservations about him being a Superman-like psycho, though to say he has nailed it is an understatement), but the twists and turns here in Season 4 (including one that’s a nod to one of the more famous twists, and it bugs me that I didn’t initially figure it out) make me think that we’ve only begun to see what Eric Kripke and co. have in store. Knowing The Boys’ penchant for excess, I don’t expect anything less than a conclusion that’s a little bit goofy and a whole lot gory.
Season 4 of The Boys is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
